Best Possible World Theodicy

In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard‐Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil. Oxford, UK: Wiley. pp. 236–250 (2013)
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Abstract

Well‐known arguments for atheism have been grounded on the alleged lack of morally justifying reasons to permit particular moral and natural evils and on the thesis that God would have to create the best possible world. After discussing obstacles to the suggestion that there is a best of all possible worlds, I examine the prospects for responding to these atheistic arguments by exploring the case for our own world's being the best of all possible worlds against the backdrop of the multiverse hypothesis – an intriguing claim about the partitioned structure of reality that has been receiving serious and recent attention in philosophy and physics.

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Hud Hudson
Western Washington University

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Religion and science.Alvin Plantinga - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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